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Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

Fake dead girlfriend of Notre Dame football's team captain to hold press conference on twitter at 12PM PST. God I love the internet. Thank you for making this all possible Al Gore.

The statement of the faked fake girlfriend is up:

My statement: This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but I have been told by Alabama's offense that Manti Te'o is not real.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

. . . The revelation of the hoax has been far-reaching. A Notre Dame graduate who launched a campaign to raise money for a cancer research group in memory of Te'o's girlfriend says he is "shell-shocked" to learn the woman didn't exist.

Dan Tudesco, a 2006 graduate who now works in public relations in New York, set up an online account at fundraising website indiegogo.com on Jan. 9 to solicit $5,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Inc. The initial pitch said donations would go to the society in memory of Lennay Kekua and in honor of Te'o, "two individuals who have been an inspiration to us through an iconic season."

Tudesco said he and three friends got the fundraising idea after seeing a video that went viral of Te'o holding his head in dismay during the Irish's 42-14 loss to Alabama in the national championship game.

The goal was to turn the loss -- and the player's sudden popularity -- into something positive.

"I think we were all kind of disappointed in the result of the game ... and the Manti story was very inspirational," Tudesco told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Notre Dame took notice of Tudesco's tweets about the fund drive and sent a university videographer to shoot an interview with him. The video was posted on the Notre Dame athletics YouTube channel Tuesday.

Tudesco said he didn't believe Notre Dame was aware of the hoax when it promoted his fundraiser.

"It would surprise me that Notre Dame would want to promote this if they knew something like this was going on," Tudesco said.

However, Notre Dame officials said Wednesday that they became aware of the hoax on Dec. 26, nearly two weeks before the championship game. University spokesman Dennis Brown didn't immediately respond to a request seeking comment Thursday . . .

Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

. . . There's a great moment in Ray Robinson's Rockne of Notre Dame when he describes Rockne taking his team down to play Georgia Tech in the 1920s. This was the heart of Ku Klux Klan country — and the Klan, of course, hated Catholics as much as they hated blacks and Jews. In the locker room before the game, Rockne gave his usual passionate speech about pride and dedication, then suddenly lowered his voice. Robinson writes:

Arriving at this climax, Rockne slowly removed a crumpled telegraph from his pocket. In silence he stared at the words on the missive. Then he began to read aloud: "PLEASE WIN THIS GAME FOR MY DADDY. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO HIM."
"It's from Billy," Rockne said, referring to his beloved 6-year-old son, the team's unofficial mascot. "He's very ill and is in the hospital." When Rockne finished, some of the players, Robinson writes, "began to cry, while others jumped up from their perches and swore they would annihilate Tech just for Billy. Indeed, that's exactly what they proceeded to do."

Billy was not the girlfriend of the quarterback. He did not mortally injure himself taking drugs or driving too fast. He was narrowly and specifically in the second, "inspirational outsider" category.

So what is so fantastic about the Manti Te'o story? It is all three narratives, all in one. It's Love Story meets Icarus meets inspirational outsider. It wasn't enough that Manti's love affair be doomed, that his girlfriend had leukemia, and that he drew from her death the inspiration to go out and get 12 tackles in the crucial defeat of Michigan State. She also had to be severely injured in a car accident. It's a combo platter! It's so over-the-top I am in awe. You couldn't be more right that this is an "aggressively modern" scandal. Why would anyone in the 21st century settle for just one played-out story line?

What's not modern, though, is the made-up part. "Billy," Knute Rockne's son? Totally healthy back home in South Bend . . .

Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

I was doing some digging last night on twitter, I can't post it from this computer, but there was a guy and a girl joking about Lennay back in late Nov/early Dec. A lot of thought has been they've had something to do with it. Teh guy, who's name is @jayRahz if anyone wants to look some of the other tweets, said that he and the girl (ceeweezy858 or something) we're hoaxed and busted the guy behing Lennay Kekau back in 2008. They were joking about it, because they knew it was fake. Another tweet said that they didn't know anything about it, until they saw the story of her dying and her name attached and recognized the name.

The more and more comes out, it looks like Te'o got duped, didn't know how to get out of the situation, so he just kept it up until it all came out. Should have just came out and admitted to it.

Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

I was doing some digging last night on twitter, I can't post it from this computer, but there was a guy and a girl joking about Lennay back in late Nov/early Dec. A lot of thought has been they've had something to do with it. Teh guy, who's name is @jayRahz if anyone wants to look some of the other tweets, said that he and the girl (ceeweezy858 or something) we're hoaxed and busted the guy behing Lennay Kekau back in 2008. They were joking about it, because they knew it was fake. Another tweet said that they didn't know anything about it, until they saw the story of her dying and her name attached and recognized the name.

The more and more comes out, it looks like Te'o got duped, didn't know how to get out of the situation, so he just kept it up until it all came out. Should have just came out and admitted to it.

I don't think anything substantial has come out yet that shows Te'o was duped. By Notre Dame's own admission, Te'o is a liar. I don't think they realized they were admitting that when they made their statement, but they (unintentionally probably) admitted he was a liar. They said he found out about the hoax in Orlando (which took place on Dec. 6), yet we have quotes from him on Dec. 8 talking about losing his GF. So how far do his lies extend?

When is Te'o going to address any of this? I get that it's embarrassing, but the longer he waits, the more guilty it makes him look. Maybe it will eventually be proven that he was in fact duped, but I haven't yet seen anything substantial that shows he was duped. Most of the circumstantial evidence implies he was in on it, IMHO. So many things would have to be true for him to have honestly been duped. Seems hard to believe to me. OTOH, him being in on it is a pretty simple explanation and makes everything very believable.

Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

If Lennay Kekau has been around since atleast 2008, a year before Te'o "met" her, I have a hard time believing that Te'o had any part of creating the situation. Combine that with other NFL players saying they phsiycally met a girl pretending to be her. The TMZ story is pretty sick. Having a lady meet your "sister" and then killing her off a month later.

I acknowledged he lied. I'm not trying to absolve him of that. It's a lot more understandable seeing a guy in a bad situation not knowing exactly what to do, rather than seeing a guy create the situation for personal gain. Both are crappy situations, but one is a lot better than the other.